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I have been obsessed with masala chai for over 10 years now and I really don’t know what took me so long to go figure out how to make it at home. I used to just fix my cravings at Coffee Bean and in the past 1 year, I’ve been relying on the Chai capsules compatible with my Nescafe Dulce Gusto but for some time now, they’ve stopped making Chai capsules. 🙁
I finally got down to figuring out the masala chai recipe when I was presented with some of the spices when I went for the Octoburst preview and I was inspired to go to the Indian spice stall to get the spices!

I tried maybe about 5 times before I finally got the recipe that I liked. The balance between the milk and water – that’s what really made a difference to the taste. Sometimes it turned out too milky, sometimes too watered down… and then finally, somewhere along the line, I nailed it.

I referred to a few online resources about making masala chai and the one thing that stood out in all the sites was that you need to bring the chai to a boil TWICE – once with the water and once with milk added. And The Hathi Cooks recommends NOT using low fat milk because it totally doesn’t taste like masala chai – and I must say she’s absolutely right! I used low fat milk in one of my experiments (not knowing it was low fat milk because I had asked my mother-in-law to get milk for me and I forgot to specify what type, assuming she’d buy the same pack I had finished) and the chai tasted… not milky at all. So yup, some things just gotta have that fat to pack that punch!

Now I can finally have my masala chai fix whenever I want! And a cold, rainy day is the best time to make (and drink) one. 🙂

Masala Chai Recipe

Author: Simply Mommie

Recipe type: Drinks

Prep time: 5 mins

Cook time: 25 mins

Total time: 30 mins

Serves: 2

Ingredients

1 cinnamon stick
2 cardamom pods
4 cloves
⅛ teaspoon ground black pepper or whole black peppercorns
1 slice ginger (0.1cm thickness)
¾ cup water
1.25cup milk (at least 3% fat)
3 2g black tea bags or 6g of loose tea leaves
4-5 teaspoons sugar

Instructions

Using a pestle and mortar, pound the cinnamon, cardamom pods and cloves. If using whole black peppercorns, add them in too.
Place them in a saucepan together with ginger and water.
Bring the water to a boil, turn off the heat, cover the saucepan and steep for 15min.
After 15min, add milk and bring to a gentle simmer on low-medium heat.
Add the tea bags and sugar. Stir and press the teabags gently with the ladle to speed up the infusion of the tea till all the sugar is melted.
Cover and steep the tea for a further 3 min.
Strain and serve.

Click the link for the complete list of drink recipes (with thumbnails) on the blog.

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Fall scented cloud dough

Cloud dough has been on my long to-do list for a long time and I finally got down to making it for the kids last week. Instead of using baby oil as per the norm, I used olive oil and scented the cloud dough with ground cinnamon and I threw in some cloves and a stick of cinnamon. Mmmph, the fall scented cloud dough smelt very wonderful indeed!

Since it’s summer all year round in Singapore, we don’t get the opportunity to experience apple-picking or the smells and sights related to autumn so I thought it’d be nice to do up something simple and since I have cinnamon and cloves in the pantry as I have been making masala chai (recipe coming up this Friday!), I had the perfect excuse to make this cloud dough to add to the sensory experience.

I’d read so much about how cloud dough feels like flour one moment and yet is easily molded and we were not disappointed with our batch. The measurements I’ve read online are 8 cups flour, 1 cup oil, but I really didn’t have so much flour at home so I just followed the ratio and made a small batch.

The kids were super excited and even put off eating the freshly air-fried chicken wings to play with the cloud dough – unbelievable!

They smelt the cinnamon, the cloves and they both agreed that the the fragrance was just so pleasant. I’m not surprised as they are always trying to have a go at my chai!

I’ll leave you with some photos of how they played with the cloud dough and I hope you try this out!